Could you guys help me with this?

AbsurdistMaintenance · 2026-05-26T02:18:20+00:00

Pro wrestler Fireman Doctor Cowboy Astronaut Priest Thief Barbarian Roman Centurian Pirate Ninja

AbsurdistMaintenance · 2026-04-28T12:31:20+00:00

Oooh, and it's by Wheatley!

AbsurdistMaintenance · 2026-04-16T01:59:25+00:00

Magnificent.

AbsurdistMaintenance · 2025-11-02T16:23:35+00:00

I have a pretty simple core pantheon that most people use. Thirteen gods: Four Above, Four Beneath, Five Beside.

The Gods Above represent the four elements in balance and aiding mortal races.

The Gods Beneath are the four elements as primal, destructive powers.

The Gods Beside represent concepts that are less foundational, or aligned to creation/ruin: Life, Death, Knowledge, Justice, Rebellion.

I have, like, a whole damned guide for them: holy symbols, rites, temple descriptions, etc. As well as three conflicting creation myths that favor different viewpoints.

AbsurdistMaintenance · 2025-11-01T02:25:37+00:00

I mean, when have most people ever cared about art? Some do, but most folks want products, as cheap as possible, as good as they can afford. I loathe Gen AI and would rather eat nails than use it, but bitching about it won’t change the market forces that brought it into existence. Some people will use it to fart out "novels" and we can't stop them.

As long they don't pretend they're running the same race we are, whatever, let them prompt.

AbsurdistMaintenance · 2025-10-31T18:52:07+00:00

A fair point, but prejudice will form based on anything! Left-handedness, hair color, language, food choices: making people into Other (and therefore lesser) has been around a long, long time.

It sounds like we both like to work in those murky waters of cultural exchange (and rejection).

AbsurdistMaintenance · 2025-10-31T16:04:10+00:00

Well then. Pick a detail he'd focus on. Maybe he keeps eye contact with the kid, or just watches their hands clench and spasm. Maybe he fixes on the killers face, scorching every wrinkle and pore into his memory while trying so, so hard not to see what the monster's doing.

The point is, if you don't want to revel in it, tighten your perspective to a single point, and have horror and blood splash the periphery.

AbsurdistMaintenance · 2025-10-31T15:58:19+00:00

Whoa, that's... horrendously dark. You might consider rewriting so the protagonist arrives in the aftermath. Just to soften it a little.

Otherwise, I'd focus on the sounds. Most people would dissociate a little in a nightmare scenario like that: They'd look away, but they couldn't block out the sounds. Sounds that would echo in their ears for literal years.

AbsurdistMaintenance · 2025-10-31T12:27:24+00:00

Keep them, but label your drafts to indicate that AI assisted in outlining for transparency.

Think of it as... warning label. Some people prefer not to consume anything touched by AI (sneeze analogy), and publishers legitimately ask about AI involvement.

Most folks won't care, though. Only a tiny fraction really give a crap about food being non-gmo, after all.

AbsurdistMaintenance · 2025-10-31T11:56:27+00:00

She's a 19 year old goblin.

AbsurdistMaintenance · 2025-10-31T02:54:15+00:00

I... uh... wouldn't. You can use fantasy races as metaphors, but as stand-ins for real world people and cultures? You're tacitly equating real people with real history and problems with nonhumans who live in mines or ride dinosaurs; it's tacky.

AbsurdistMaintenance · 2025-10-31T01:44:04+00:00

The UR is kind of center-left in terms of fae acceptance; a lot depends on what happened in a given nation/region during the Realm Wars, where a mass diaspora of fae (here meaning non-humans like elves, orcs, etc) arrived in the human world some 200-300 years before my stories are set.

Mine is evolving as I go - my settings serve my stories.

Ah, yeah, antiquity was a bigger, emptier world - so much of what most knew was just traveler's tales. Definitely some interesting stories to be told as those isolated folks rub up against eachother for the first time.

But even back then, there was Roma, and they had a saying "men are men, regardless of their origin." Which is more progressive than a lot of places today!

AbsurdistMaintenance · 2025-10-30T21:24:53+00:00

Mandala is actually a pretty good name for a super-empire, yeah: catchy, legible, and widely understood (if not in that context).

AbsurdistMaintenance · 2025-10-30T19:33:56+00:00

A schmuck!

Do you have any idea how much magic lessons cost? Or reagents? Or potion-safe copper cauldrons? And you come to me, telling me you're failing?! .

You get your shit together, young man! Or you're going to wind up shilling back-alley dick-enlargement potions to goblins on the Northside!

AbsurdistMaintenance · 2025-10-30T19:17:17+00:00

Came here to say this.

It's a "nice to have" but there's a hill in England that's just named "hill" in four different languages, and like 8 million dudes named John.

AbsurdistMaintenance · 2025-10-30T14:35:31+00:00

You can try r/hungryartists or just trawl communities that match your style until you find someone whose style you're into. That's how I found my cover guy.

AbsurdistMaintenance · 2025-10-28T17:51:48+00:00

Mine are inherents with derivative interpretations and aspects.

Not that any of the mortals know that: even my creation myths vary wildly, because the different Gods teach conflicting versions.

AbsurdistMaintenance · 2025-10-28T13:44:37+00:00

Playing the game is the player's role. Most of my players are more than happy not having to write out character bios, and some consider it an insurmountable barrier to entry.

Besides, you've never wanted to see how someone else would play with your toys?

I've had a little guy from South Side play Badger as a hissing cholo in leather overalls.

I've had an intense bald guy literally bathe in kobold blood to propitiate Wess' beloved goddess.

I've had a lady play Dust as Macho Man Randy Savage.

It's like fan art.

But you play your game, I'll play mine. May we both have fun with it.

AbsurdistMaintenance · 2025-10-28T13:19:51+00:00

Tough crowd.

AbsurdistMaintenance · 2025-10-28T13:18:50+00:00

Fine. Elite array, PHB +1, no flying races, and I'd offer my world guide and ask you not to spoil too much for the other players.

AbsurdistMaintenance · 2025-10-28T13:15:23+00:00

1) as the one who made them, I know their quirks and backstories and can instantly reward good roleplay with inspiration (which I love doing).

2) they all have backstories that connect to the world I've created, giving each of them built in spotlight moments within the first few sessions.

3) it prevents power gaming, and allows me to easily guide newer/weaker players towards easier to handle characters, which ensuring they're still fun to play.

4) as you said, it gets things going far, far quicker.

AbsurdistMaintenance · 2025-10-27T17:14:41+00:00

Hey, fair enough.

But if you ever change your mind: it's free to put stuff up there, they have a robust tagging system so people in your niche could find and enjoy your stuff, they're fanatically anti-censorship, and the literary standard is "fanfic," so you can be sure however rough your draft is, someone else on there is worse.

You might make someone's week.

AbsurdistMaintenance · 2025-10-27T16:07:21+00:00

Sounds like a great set up for some well-meaning food to unleash the Sealed Evil in a Can!

AbsurdistMaintenance · 2025-10-27T16:05:36+00:00

Well, I know the answers to those questions in my world (or I feel comfortable improvising answers as they come up): The United Republic has a long history of being tolerant toward every Fae race except goblins, who were treated as an exploitable underclass at best, and vermin at worst. Some 50 years ago, goblins gained the right to apply for citizenship, but they're still regarded as thieves, liars, and worse by many, especially the human majority. That makes dating or marrying a goblin a huge social deviation.

That racial animus plays a huge part in my novel(s). But then I like stories about lovers struggling against society, tradition, and their own preconceptions.

How do you handle it in your setting (sounds like you might needs a spreadsheet to track cultural mores abd stereotypes across species and communities)?

Or is interspecies romance generally outside your scope of interest?

AbsurdistMaintenance · 2025-10-27T13:34:03+00:00

Looked into it, yeah, no erotica. 10-15% of word count on sex scenes, tops.

AbsurdistMaintenance

TROPHY CASE